CURE Talks Cancer

As the population grows, so too does the need for research and specialized treatment in the field of geriatric cancer. But there is much to be studied in this patient population, according to one expert. 

In this week’s episode of the CURE® Talks Cancer podcast, we discuss the current research and treatment landscape involving elderly patients with cancer. To comment on the developments involving this patient population, as well as how research is starting to get out of the shadows of an evidence gap, we spoke with Dr. Grant Williams, a geriatrician and medical oncologist at UAB Medicine.

When it comes to the field as it stands, Williams says, “I think there's a big evidence gap, that I think we're slowly trying to fill and improve our understanding of. And we're starting to see specific intervention studies in this population that that are suggesting that these personalized approaches really do help.”

When 13-year old Jelena Colasurdo started experiencing intense headaches and nausea, a brain tumor was the last thing on her and mom Andrea’s minds. Unfortunately, as they soon found out, it was in fact true, and Jelena had to begin treatment, just at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

On this week’s episode of the “CURE® Talks Cancer” podcast, Jelena and Andrea join us to talk about what it was like facing cancer and a pandemic at the same time, and how they were excited to partner with St. Baldrick’s to raise money for pediatric cancer research.

In this week’s episode of the CURE® Talks Cancer podcast, we’re chatting with Dr. Tanja Gruber, the Chief of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at Stanford Children’s Health, about how pediatric cancer treatment is evolving thanks to advances in treatments like immunotherapy, and what parents should do after their child receives a diagnosis.

In this episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we spoke with Dr. Guru Sonpavde about the current landscape of penile cancer.

An extremely rare disease, penile cancer, according to estimates from the American Cancer Society, will affect approximately 2,200 men in 2020 in the United States.

Sonpavde, director of the Bladder Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, provides insight into this rare cancer and discusses why it’s difficult to treat patients with metastatic disease, as well as why research in this field is severely lacking. 

“It’s tough, logistically, to open a trial globally for a rare cancer, because what it means is you really have to open it in a lot of sites, a lot of institutions, to capture all these patients,” said Sonpavde in an interview with CURE®. “So, that obviously raises the issue of costs. Can you really open a trial in a thousand institutions that will only enroll a small number of patients?” 

After he received a diagnosis of advanced lung cancer, Larry Whipple knew his chances were not good. But after his initial consultation near home left him with few options, Whipple became his best own advocate by asking the right questions and seeking the best experts – which meant finding a second opinion nearly 1,500 miles from his hometown. 

This week on the CURE Talks Cancer podcast, we spoke with Whipple – who’s been cancer free for two years – about how his insistence on the best care lead to results he could only dream of, and how other patients with cancer can take an active role in their own care, too.

When it comes to how his fighting spirit worked in his favor after his diagnosis, Whipple laughed, “One of my daughter-in-law’s closest friends, when she heard that I was diagnosed with cancer, she said ‘Oh, I feel so sorry for cancer’, because I’m a fighter and I don’t give up!”

The treatment landscape looks bright for patients with skin cancer, especially with the medicine, technology and innovation going on in the space, according to Dr. Jeremy Brauer. In this week’s episode, CURE spoke to Brauer, a spokesperson for the Skin Cancer Foundation, about the current treatment strategies in skin cancer, and how immunotherapy and targeted agents have been a “game changer” for those with advanced disease.  “Immunotherapy and targeted therapies, more of these are going to be made available to individuals with metastatic melanoma as well as advanced squamous cell carcinoma,” he said, adding that patients should be sure to become educated about their disease and treatment options. “Knowledge is power. A great resource is your board-certified dermatologist, and also the resources available on reputable web sites like the Skin Cancer Foundation and all of the literature they have available. Within dermatology, there is the American Academy of Dermatology and other societies that are great resources. I do believe it begins with education.”

In this week’s episode of the CURE Talks Cancer podcast, surgical oncologist Dr. Margo Shoup sheds some light on retroperitoneal sarcoma and shares her thoughts on what patients need to know about its diagnosis and treatment.

In this episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we spoke with Dr. Dan Tran, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon at VCU, about his journey with cancer and how his experience influenced his career in medicine.

Tran, who was in residency and about to begin a five-month rotation in anesthesia in the fall of 2017, developed back pain that was so excruciating it started to affect his ability to walk. 

Within months, Tran started experiencing numbness in his legs when he decided to go to the emergency room to get checked out. After several tests, and just days before Christmas, Tran was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at the age of 30.

Now, three years out from his diagnosis, Tran discusses what his journey was like, what it has been like to be a medical professional with cancer, and what advice he offers his patients who are coming in for treatments as a result of oral side effects of cancer treatment. 

“Everyone gets dealt a different set of cards and I got delta a crappy hand,” said Tran in an interview with CURE®. “But, it kind of depends on what you do with it. I've always had a pretty laid-back kind of personality and understood that there's things that I can control and things I can't control. This is something I could not control, but I can control what I do with it.” 

Myeloproliferative neoplasms, or MPNs, are not a common type of blood cancer, occurring in approximately 300,00 individuals in the US, according to Dr. Ruben Mesa. In this episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we spoke with Mesa about an MPN diagnosis, what patients need to know and why it is important to become informed in order to improve patient-physician conversations. “My biggest piece of advice is to learn a lot about your disease and also to make notes for yourself both in terms of what you have, what they expect, what questions you have so that you can relay those to your health care provider and really help to overcome that gap in knowledge and understanding,” he said, adding that MPNs are a type of cancer often not known about.  “I find that there can be tremendous distress for individuals because of their lack of familiarity with such a disease,” Mesa explained. “For many individuals, when they are diagnosed with this, it's the first time they've heard about it and they have never known anyone else that has had the disease. So they don't have a good frame of reference. That creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty and distress. The more we can alleviate that, the more individuals are able to come to at least a comfortable understanding of their disease and work to try to move past that.”

Good nutrition is important for patients with cancer, as it can help them proactively manage treatment related side effects, prevent weight loss, and reduce the risk of cancer recurrence. However, treatment and its side effects can often cause a range of issues that affect a person’s ability to maintain a healthy diet. 

On this week’s episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we’re chatting with Rachel Wong, an oncology dietitian from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center about what dietary modifications can be made to maintain nutrition, and how supplements can be used safely to help patients get the vitamins and minerals they need to stay healthy.